I began to think if we did have to take a peek a little deeper into the crater of the volcano, just to make sure if the thing that we were looking for was not inside it. Of course, Billy pulled me away the second I decided to take a look closer from the peak, saying that it was far too dangerous.
"What are you doing?!" Billy asked me as he had pulled me away from the descending surface.
"Just a closer peek! We will never know unless we make sure by seeing it with our own eyes!" I told him.
"Forget it! Let us just contact Commodore Quentin and tell him that there is nothing here!" he responded.
Just as he was about to tap his mask headband, I suddenly came across a large dark silhouette right from behind him. I pulled him away from the silhouette as it then eventually revealed itself to be a standing alien, equipped with a beam spear but seemed yet to be ready to attack us. I aimed my submachine gun towards its head right away as I slowly moved backwards while Billy followed to do the same very shortly after.
"Great! What now?!" I muttered to myself.
However, just like earlier it collapsed to the ground shortly after with the exact same condition like its teammates back before we had reached the peak. I was at first very anxious, but as soon as I determined that it had indeed died by gently kicking its head twice, I became at least a little bit relieved. It made also wonder on the reason why an alien could be present on the top of a volcano, which was a place of extreme danger to them.
"What is it doing here anyway…" I muttered to myself.
Suddenly, Billy mentioned something that could at least give us a hint on where the alien could be coming from.
"Footprints!" he said, shouting. "Look for its footprints! That way, we can know where it was coming from!"
I immediately began to look down and trying to search for any signs of their traces on the pebble ground. Although it was really hard, I eventually found an unusual and strange indentation on the ground surface, and when I turned to look at the alien's feet it did not take me long to realize that they matched, indicating that it was indeed its footprint.
"Found one here!" I said.
"Okay, now we look for another and do not run! We really do not want the footprints to be scattered away" he responded as he began to walk and search very slowly.
We proceeded to look around, and Jessica was the one who found the second footprint. I had my doubts when it seemed like it was coming from the direction of inside the volcano, but when Billy found the third one and was closer to the mouth of the volcano, my doubts slowly subsided. It was when he found the fourth footprint that it made me completely sure the alien had indeed coming from inside the volcano.
"Impossible…" Billy said.
"But the footprints, Bill!" I told him, also confused.
He did not seem to be convinced right away, even though it was actually him who had told us about the footprints in the first place. Therefore, I asked him about an agreement – we would go deeper into the volcano no more than sixteen feet and if we could not find anything unusual at all, we were to immediately go back to where Commodore Quentin and Commander General Girsang were. Upon hearing it, he went silent. Jessica also tried to convince him, but he was still in deep silence. After a short while, he finally nodded twice and finally said that he agreed to it.
"Fine... Five meters, is not it?" Billy asked me, making sure
"Yes." I responded to him quickly. "Thank you, Bill."
We began to descend down into the volcano crater, with our firearms at the ready and all three of us in full alert. I believe we had not even covered ten feet before I noticed another very similar indentation on the ground, indicating another footprint of the alien earlier. It still looked like it was coming straight from down the center of the crater, and upon realizing it my anxiety and nervousness began to slowly emerge inside me again.
'But, really? What are the chances?' I thought to myself as I kept on walking very slowly. 'They cannot stand the volcanic ashes, yet they decided to land right on top of an extremely dangerous spot. Are they that desperate to get that meteorite that they do not think of their own safety?'
When we finally covered sixteen feet, another footprint was found by Billy himself, but with a rather different trait compared to the other footprints. It looked like it was not coming from the center of the volcano crater, but instead, from somewhere along the descended surface. Billy immediately signaled us to follow him by walking slowly as we also stay fully alert on our surroundings.
At first, there seemed to be nothing unusual left for us to find there and apparently Billy was also thinking the same that it made him eventually stopped moving and proceeded to crouch before he began to take a closer look at the ground around us. However, Jessica suddenly notified us that she had noticed what looked like a considerably large hole somewhere in the distance.
"What is that?" she asked both me and Billy as she pointed towards the direction of the hole.
"Can geyser holes occur on surfaces like this?" I asked with doubts. "But if it is not a geyser hole, then-"
"Fine, I guess there is no hurting in seeing it." Billy responded, cutting my words off in the process.
We decided to head for the hole, which progressively seemed to get larger with each closer step that we took towards it. By the time we arrived right in front of the hole, I could somehow be sure that it was not made through natural processes nor it was caused by the volcano eruption. As Billy immediately crouched again and looked for footprints, it only took him a short while before he found another one, and seemed to be leading directly away from the hole.
"Yep, they were coming out from this hole right here…" Billy said as he stood up again.
"Then, I guess we should go deeper inside…" I said as I aimed my submachine gun towards the hole.
It had the height of roughly nine feet, with the width of perhaps seven or seven and a half feet. It immediately hit me that the aliens would most likely create the hole just enough for each of them to get out to the surface. Therefore, it would also mean that the tunnel following the hole would lead to the very thing that had caused the whole incident. It was at that moment that I felt like we also needed to get deeper inside the hole in order to find out the real root cause. Again, Billy seemed to be hesitating about it.
"Are you sure that we need to go that far?" Billy asked me in full hesitation.
"Please… I need you to trust me… we need it so that we can provide some sort of a concrete evidence about another extraterrestrial invasion…" I pleaded to him.
Billy then turned to Jessica, who quickly nodded to him three times, perhaps signaling him that I had my point. He looked down for a short moment, and thankfully he quickly agreed with what I said to him, although apparently still showing signs of hesitations and doubts.
"Do not you think we should contact your supervisors now?" Jessica asked just as we began to get inside the hole.
"No, not just yet." I replied to her quickly as I took my flashlight out. "I still need to see what it is that lies beyond this tunnel…"
I first began by telling both Billy and Jessica to follow me very closely from behind since we are completely in the dark for both our current situation inside and also our surroundings. Luckily, since the tunnel seemed to be descending down, if something threatening were to happen such as a sudden encounter with one or few aliens inside the tunnel, all three of us would be able to immediately execute a counter fire since none of us are blocking the view of each other. That said, I also began to feel like there would not be any aliens suddenly approaching from behind us, obviously.
Not too long after that, I began to feel like the heat around me had somewhat turned to be a little colder than it was when we had just entered the tunnel. I turned to the two of them and asked if they also felt the same, to which they responded by saying that they did, indicating that we were indeed getting closer to the thing that had come from the outer space and hidden by the aliens.
Within several steps that we took, the colder it was for me until the point where I could barely feel the heat from outside anymore. However, instead of making me relieved of the cooler temperature, it instead made me more anxious and nervous at the same time since I realized for sure that we were also getting closer to a form of an unknown massive threat.
Then, I suddenly could not hear my footsteps anymore. I immediately stopped descending down the tunnel and ceased to move for a little while, before I then began to walk down again step by step. Apparently, both Billy and Jessica seemed to not understand what I had just done, and so he asked me right away.
"What is it?" he asked me.
"Just now, I could not hear my footsteps anymore…" I told him as I still descended down the tunnel step by step.
Then, bit by bit the tunnel seemed to get widened up. That was not the thing that caught my attention however, it was the occurrence of the very familiar bright purple light in the distance that I nearly slipped and fell down the moment I saw it. I tried my best not to make my hands trembling, but I ended up failing miserably in holding back my nervous sweat. Shortly after, we finally reached another ground that no longer descending down.
Right at that moment, I tried to stomp the floor to make sure of something. When it did not even let out any faint thudding noise, I knew for sure right away that it had been made up of the very same material that had made up the floor of the alien mothership back in Chicago. The only difference was that the current floor was not comprised of small and tiny chains that were interlocked together resulting in only a very tiny gap between them like it had been three years earlier.
Aside from that, I also quickly noticed that the whole tunnel had turned into what seemed to be a corridor, with a bright purple light lengthened right in the middle of the floor to the end of the corridor. At that point, any doubts regarding alien invasion had all vanished, and we had technically found the evidence of another extraterrestrial invasion on earth.
I decided that it was the right time for me to explain briefly to both Billy and Jessica as well about the whole perfectly similar characteristics based on what had happened three years earlier. When I finished explaining, Jessica seemed to be at a total loss for words while Billy looked as if he was having a difficult time to digest the information.
"Are you telling me that we are already inside their mothership?" Billy asked me, still rather unconvinced.
"I can tell that much based from what I have experienced, so yes." I answered him quickly.
Of course, it was very natural for them to be terrified and clueless at the same time. However, I tried to calm them down by saying that most of the aliens had probably been poisoned due to the intense amount of volcanic ashes. If anything, we were actually lucky to be able to find and get inside the mothership when most of them had been taken down by nature.
I also added that, while we could no longer feel the heat caused by the volcanic ashes, the air around us was probably still considered to be seriously contaminated by the aliens that it would definitely hinder their activities severely, if any of them dare to get exposed by the air that was. Upon hearing my words, the two of them seemed more or less convinced and I could slowly feel the tense and oppressing atmosphere around us began to slowly subside. The same also went for both my anxiety and nervousness.
"So, now… we have to contact Commodore Quentin about this… evidence…" Billy said as he gestured his hand around the corridor.
"Do you want to be the one telling him about it instead of me for this time?" I responded by asking him.
"I would rather you to be the one telling him. Especially since you have a prior experience about this." he replied to me as he sighed.
I nodded as a response, and I quickly tapped my mask headband as I prepared myself to tell everything that had happened. Unlike three years earlier, my watch could still work inside the alien mothership, and it showed the time 10.13 a.m. when I briefly glanced at it…